The Rebirth of My Identity

It was my first day of elementary school in the U.S. My lunchbox was full of grapes and carrots and my stomach was full of butterflies. As I walked up to the group of kids lining up outside the school, I turned to look at my mother. I wanted to be brave but I didn’t want her to leave. She signaled which line I belonged in, hugged me goodbye, and left. I walked over to the line, stood behind a girl with straight blond hair and waited to see what would happen next. Everyone around me was chatting and laughing. I looked around and wondered how many of these kids previously knew each other and how many were just meeting for the first time. Soon various women and a man came out and began to take us all inside. I followed the crowd into the first grade area and proceeded to go into the same classroom as the blond girl in front of me had gone into. Everyone began looking for their corresponding desk. I joined in, found my desk, and sat down. The enthusiastic man from that morning went to the front of the room and began saying speaking very quickly. That’s when it hit me—my teacher was going to teach the class in English, a language I did not speak. It was September 1997 in Arlington, Virginia, and although I had been born there, I had moved to Guatemala and fully developed my Spanish and forgot any English that I had known beforehand. We had moved back to Arlington a month before school started, leaving me very little time to learn any English at all. I knew the basics like 'hello' and 'thank you' but nowhere near enough to gain anything from my classes at school. It felt like I had been thrown into the deep end for the first time and had to either sink or swim. I went from class to class mimicking my peers and hoping that I didn’t take a misstep. After lunch, I was instructed to go to a room. I wasn’t sure what I had done but followed instructions and walked on over. I sat down at my desk and scanned the room. It was the first time that day that I was in a room of other students that also spoke no English. Excited at the possibility of making friends, I asked around if anyone spoke Spanish. No luck.

There were about eight students in my English as a Second Language class and they represented cultures from around the world. However, our inability to communicate means that I didn’t really meet any of them until much later, some taking up to four years to really speak English. The next few months were difficult. I followed along with students until it was time for ESL. In ESL, I worked hard to read as many books as possible. I would take the books home and copy them to learn spelling and sentence structure. My mom would help translate for me and within four months I was speaking English. Although I didn’t speak it well, I did begin making new friends and being able to communicate with my teachers from my mainstream classes. As time went by and I finished elementary school and went on to middle school, I continued to identify as Hispanic on standardized tests but it stopped being of any meaning to me. I still ate frijoles con arroz, watched Univision, and spoke Spanish but I never felt out of place or different from my peers in any way. I had completely assimilated to Virginia culture. I knew all about Jamestown, the Civil War, and square dancing. It wasn’t until senior year of high school that I began feeling that “otherness” again. Up until that year, I had always been the only, or at least one of the only two, Hispanics in the classroom. Although my school did have other Hispanic students, they seemed to rarely be placed in the same level classes as me. Over time, with the push of my mother, I had not only become a mainstreamed student but a high-achieving one. For some reason, it seemed that my other Hispanic peers could not say the same. It was that year that I began to take Spanish for Fluent Speakers. I had been taking French for years and dabbled in Chinese so I wanted to try something new. As I walked into the room, it had been the first time in 13 years that I had walked into a classroom of only Hispanics. I immediately connected with several students in the class and it turned into my favorite period of the day. The material was not difficult but its familiarity gave me a sense of home, a sense of belonging. I was also taking Government class that year, another subject that greatly interested me. If Spanish was my favorite class, Government took a very close second place. I was friends with almost every single person in the class and loved the subject matter. Learning about political issues and how they were handled in government was fascinating. One day my teacher was beginning a lesson and asked those that believed immigrants should not be allowed to enter the country to please stand up. Suddenly some of my friends stood up. I could not believe my eyes. That feeling of “otherness” hit hard at that moment. Although I was technically born in Arlington, I could not shake the feeling that they were telling me that I shouldn’t be sitting there. That I should not have been allowed to come to the United States. That I did not belong here. Looking back on it, it is very possible that many of those students just listened to what their parents told them and stood up that day. It is very possible that they were not informed on immigration issues and that they didn’t know about the civil wars that happened in Guatemala and El Salvador and how they were immigration push factors. It is possible that to this day they still believe that Hispanics should stay on the other side of the border. I don’t know. I never had the courage to bring it up ever again. However difficult it may have been to face this reality, I do thank my teacher for doing so. Up until that year, I had lived in a bubble of comfort and had not realized that the moment I left Arlington, a county known for its liberal residents, I would not always be treated like just another American citizen. It began to slowly dawn on me that my Hispanic identity would play a factor in every aspect of my life, whether I liked it or not, and I had to begin embracing it. From my first days in elementary school to my last days in college, my cultural identity has played a key role in my experience and I wouldn’t take back a single moment of it.